subject: The Truth about Post Workout Soreness [print this page] The Truth about Post Workout Soreness The Truth about Post Workout Soreness
Have you ever felt really stiff and sore after a really tough new workout schedule? Have you ever wondered if something was wrong? It's true that post-workout muscle soreness is natural, but it can still be harmful if you aren't careful, and there are some things you can do to help your muscles get over it.
But first what is post-workout muscle soreness? It is a process that's called delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS for short, and it occurs when you push you muscles too hard and they start taking damage. The soreness is caused by left over toxins that build up in your muscles. Any stiffness you might feel is caused by adhesions which are a natural process your body uses to help repair any damaged muscles.
Although Doms is a natural process, and is quite healthy, you should be feeling its effects after all of your workouts. If you do it's usually an indication that you are overworking your body and that you need to either slow down or incorporate some recovery workouts into your program.
Getting DOMS after all of your workouts means your causing too much regular damage to your muscles. You need to be careful if this is happening because you can actually cause some sever damage to your body if you're not careful. There are a number of things you can incorporate into your training though to help deal with stress, and speed up recover.
Restorative workouts are one of the most important things to incorporate in any high intensity workout program. Restorative, or recover workouts are just short programs you put in to fix any stress, imbalances, or tightness that's caused by hard training. You can either just incorporate them into your daily programs, or if you want a bit more recovery time you can take a full week to focus just on your recovery.
Recover programs can be any type of exercise that will help you stretch out tight muscles so you don't get any injuries. How often and how long these recovery sessions are vary based on your life style. For instance if you have a sedentary job you will need a lot longer to recover then someone who works a high impact job.
Some of the more popular recover programs people do involve Pilates, Yoga, Swimming, or just stretching, but you can really work any sort of exercise to help you.
One of my own recovery programs simply involves a light 10-20 minute walk/jog followed by a good 20 minutes of stretching and flexibility exercises. The key is to try and target all of the different muscle groups. I typically do this program twice a week, usually on my off days.
Tip: Pilates foam roller exercises are another great way to relieve any back tension and stretch out your muscles.
So it's ok to get sore but if you're regularly doing high intensity workouts and you find yourself feeling very sore all of the time then you need to start adding in some recovery sessions, so that you can avoid injuring yourself. This may seem like a simple concept but it's one of the most overlooked elements of any training program, and are one of the major causes of injuries.
